Other automobiles were ahead of us, other cars were behind us, in the procession of Nomads leaving the South for the North, but there had been rain in the night, so that the wind carried little dust.  My spirit sang when we had left the long, cool avenue lined with the great silver-trunked plane trees (which seemed always, even in sunshine, to be dappled with moonlight) and dashed toward the barrier of the Esterels that flung itself across our path.  The big blue car bounded up the steep road, laughing and purring, like some huge creature of the desert escaped from a cage, regaining its freedom.  But every time we neared a curve it was considerate enough to slow down, just enough to swing round with measured rhythm, smooth as the rocking of a child’s cradle.

Perhaps, thought I, the chauffeur wasn’t cross, but only concentrated.  If I had to drive a powerful, untamed car like this, up and down roads like that, I should certainly get motor-car face, a kind of inscrutable, frozen mask that not all the cold cream in the world could ever melt.

I wondered if he resorted to cold cream, and before I knew what I was doing, I found myself staring at the statuesque brown profile through my talc triangle.

Evidently animal magnetism can leak through talc, for suddenly the chauffeur glanced sharply round at me, as if I had called him.  “Did you speak?” he asked.

“Dear me, no, I shouldn’t have dared,” I hurried to assure him.  Again he transferred his attention from the road to me, though only a fraction, and for only the fraction of a second.  I felt that he saw me as an eagle on the wing might see a fly on a boulder toward which he was steering between intervening clouds.

“Why shouldn’t you dare?” he wanted to know.

“One doesn’t usually speak to lion-tamers while they’re engaged in taming,” I murmured, quite surprised at my audacity and the sound of my own voice.

The chauffeur laughed.  “Oh!” he said.

“Or to captains of ocean liners on the bridge in thick fogs,” I went on with my illustrations.

“What do you know about lion-tamers and captains on ocean liners?” he inquired.

“Nothing.  But I imagine.  I’m always doing a lot of imagining.”

“Do you think you will while you’re with Lady Turnour?”

“She hasn’t engaged my brain, only my hands and feet.”

“And your time.”

“Oh, thank goodness it doesn’t take time to imagine.  I can imagine all the most glorious things in heaven and earth in the time it takes you to put your car at the next corner.”

He looked at me longer, though the corner seemed dangerously near—­to an amateur.  “I see you’ve learned the true secret of living,” said he.

“Have I?  I didn’t know.”

“Well, you have.  You may take it from me.  I’m a good deal older than you are.”

“Oh, of course, all really polite men are older than the women they’re with.”